Filmmaker Diss Tracks

It's more about personal behavior than the actual filmmaking but the best example of a directorial diss track I can think of is a lengthy letter that Truffaut wrote to Godard after Godard called one of Truffaut's films "a bourgeois lie."  

filmcinemamovie.proboards.com/thread/32/truffauts-letter-godard

A few excerpts:

"It is because of this letter that I feel the moment for me has come to tell you, at length, that according to me, you behave like a shit."

"It is my turn to say that you are a liar. At the beginning of Tout Va Bien, there is this line: “to make a movie, movie stars are needed”. Lie. Everyone knows your insistence in obtaining Jane Fonda who would try to escape, despite the fact that all the financiers told you to take anyone. You have gathered your couple of movie stars, à la Clouzot: since they have agreed to work for me, a tenth of their salary will be sufficient, etc. Karmitz, Bernard Paul need movie stars, you don’t, so, then again, lie. The press: movie stars were forced upon him. Another lie regarding your new movie: you do not mention the comfortable advance on incomings you solicited and received and which would be sufficient, even if Ferreri, as you oddly accused him, spent the funds that were reserved to you."

"You have always have the knack for passing yourself off as a victim, like Cayatte, like Boisset, like Michel Drach, victim of Pompidou, of Marcellin, of censorship, of distributors, whereas in fact you always managed to do exactly what you wanted, when you wanted, as you wanted and above all to preserve your hard-line image, even if it is at the expense of defenceless people, such as Janine Bazin."

"A girl from the B.B.C. calls you to talk of political movies in a TV show about me, I warned her in advance that you will refuse, but better than that you hang up on her without letting her finish her sentence, elitist behaviour, shit behaviour, as when you agree to go to Geneva, London or Milan and do not show up, just to astonish, to surprise, like Sinatra, like Brando, shit behaviour on a pedestal."

"Fraud. Dandy. You have always been a dandy, when you sent a telegram to de Gaulle for his prostate, when you called Braumberger “dirty Jew” on the phone, when you called Chauvet a corrupt (because he was the last one to resist you), dandy when you mix: Renoir-Verneuil, it’s six of one and half a dozen of the other, dandy again today when you pretend to show the truth on cinema, on those who work for it obscurely, unpaid, etc."

"Today you are strong, you are considered to be strong, you not the lover in pain anymore, like everyone, you prefer yourself, you hold the truth on life, politics, engagement, cinema, love, all is really clear to you and everyone who thinks the contrary is a bastard, even if your opinion in June is different from your opinion in April."

"I want to tell that I don’t worry about you, there are enough wealthy kids in Paris, inhibited because they had their first car at 18-year old, who will be happy to be cleared of everything by saying: “I am producing the next Godard”."

"The idea that men are equal is theoretical for you, it is not felt, that’s why you can’t love anyone, nor help anyone, other that throwing some cash on the table."

"Lover of gestures and spectacular declarations, haughty and peremptory, you are still settled on your pedestal in 1973, indifferent to the others, incapable of giving few hours of your time to help anybody."